but still Random and Rambling

Entries tagged with poetry

This is incredible, amazing, and totally awesome. I might as well be cliched, because nothing I say could touch how inspired she made me this morning. It starts with her (Sarah Kay) speaking her poem "When I Have A Daughter" which brought my heart up into my throat. She goes on to talk about performance poetry and living. Listen to all 18 minutes.

Bless what brought us throughthe sea and the fire; we are caughtin history like whales in polar ice.Yet you have taught us to push against the walls,

to reach out and pull each other along,to strive to find the way throughif there is no way around, to go on.To utter ourselves with every breath

against the constriction of fear,to know ourselves as the body born from Abrahamand Sarah, born out of rock and desert.We reach back through two hundred arches of hips

long dust, carrying their memories inside usto live again in our life, Isaac and Rebecca,Rachel, Jacob, and Leah. We say words shapedby ancient use like steps worn into rock..

Bless the quiet of sleepeasing over the ravaged body, who quietsthe troubled waters of the mind to a poolin which shines the placid broad face of the moon.

Bless the teaching of how to openin love so all the doors and windows of the bodyswing wide on their rusty hingesand we give ourselves with both hands.

Bless what stirs in us compassionfor the hunger of the chickadee in the stormstarving for seeds we can carry out,the wounded cat wailing in the alley,

what shows us our face in a stranger,who teaches us what we clutch shrivelsbut what we give goes off in the worldcarrying bread to people not yet born.

Bless the gift of memorythat breaks unbidden, released from a flower or a cup of teaso the dead move like rain through the room.

Bless what forces us to invent goodness every morning and what never freesus from the cost of knowledge, which is to act on what we know again and again.

All living are one and holy, let us rememberAs we eat, as we work, as we walk and drive.All living are one and holy, we mustmake ourselves worthy.We must act out justice and mercy and healingas the sun rises and as the sun sets,as the moon rises and the stars wheel above us,we must repair goodness...

We will try to be holy,We will try to repair the world given us to hand on.Precious is this treasure of words and knowledge and deeds that moves inside us,Holy is the hand that works for peace and for justice,Holy is the mouth that speaks for goodnessholy is the foot that walks toward mercy.

Let us lift each other on our shoulders and carry each other along.Let holiness move in us.Let us pay attention to its small voice,Let us see the light in others and honor that light.Remember the dead who paid our way here dearly, dearlyand remember the unborn for whom we build our houses.

Praise the light that shines before us, through us, after us, Amein.

Amidah /əˈmiːdə/﻿▶noun: Judaism: a prayer consisting of a varying number of blessings recited while the worshippers stand.– origin C19: Heb., lit. ‘standing’.

We just got back from ceremony for the winners of the Huntsville Literary Association's Young Writers Contest. T got 3rd place, Senior Poetry. $40 and a certificate. It's a big deal locally. Lots of entries. The Huntsville Times usually prints the top three in every category. My son the violin-playing, astrophysicist poet.

Astra

O stars you glow so brilliantly O giant balls of gasWe like to find your distance With a shifting parallax